Design Approaches - Start With A Blank Slate - Or ...?

One approach to coming up with designs for turnings is to
look at many pieces as possible - photos, drawings, hands
on - then pick a style or an aggregate of styles
that appeals to you and start turning your versions.

Another approach is basically the application of western
classical proportions - derived, unfortunately, mainly
from Greek architecture - lots of geometry and layout
lines. The wood is merely the medium for creating
The Ideal Form.

The Form Follows Function Approach - a vase for a long
stemmed rose - tall and narrow, with most of the weight
as low as possible. The wood should not detract from
the rose(s).

The cousin of The Form Follows Function approach is
the "I Have This Slick Tool Which Does _____" and
it's non-identical twin "I'm Really Good With This (skew,
spindle gouge, skewgie, Ellsworth Grind) Tool."
- Tooling Determines the Piece

Some come at design from "It looks like it's made
of (leather, metal, ceramic, stone) - but it's WOOD!".
I see Turned Wood Cowboy Hats and all Segmented
Turned Pieces in this "school". We use to call this
sort of thing Mind F*CK - just screwing with your
head - man.

Then there's the Mixed Media Approach - "If you look
hard enough you'll eventually find the wood in this
piece, amongst the gold and silver leaf, the titanium
wires, chemical and paint patination and the ground
stone and epoxy and mother of pearl inlay.".

The current D'jour Design Approach seems to be
heavy on "texturing" - chatter tools, carving tools
and grinding tools ads everywhere. At some point,
someone will discover the pipe maker's Coral Cutting
Machine (two flat spear point "drills", set about 20
degrees apart which rotate and alternate making
contact with the wood - distance between contact
points can be varied) and "coral" texturing will become
the rage.

The What The Hell Is It approach sets out to create
things in wood which a) don't look like anything anyone's
ever seen before and b) selects wood that'll allow
the making of some or all of the components of the
piece. A “Winged Vessel” is an example of this
type of thing

Being formally trained as an engineer, I find the
How In The Hell Did He/She Make That approach
interesting. Escoulen's asymetric and eccentric
turned pieces facinate me. These are the pieces
that sometimes keep me awake for a day or so
working out how they were probably done.

I personally lean heavily towards “I wonder what’s
hiding in this chunk of wood?”. I just turned a
series of small lidded boxes from an old split
rail cedar fence post. Under the rough gray
surface, below thirty years of dirt and grime
- tight straight grain. Perfect for aligning
the lid to the base of a turned box. This
approach often ends with nothing left to
turn and a floor covered a foot deep in curlies
and chips. Alas, large quantities of horse
manure do not always mean there’s a pony
somewhere close by, if not within the pile.
But I’ve found a lot of ponies and the rest
makes good composting material and kindling.

So what approach do you take when it’s
for a piece just for you?

charlie b